Tag: Politics

Here’s the difference between Blumenthal’s response and McMahon’s: Blumenthal is all about desperately clutching to jobs that already exist but are under pressure to leave because they can be done more efficiently elsewhere. He’s completely focused on using the power of government either to bribe or force businesses to stay in Connecticut, and don’t miss the fact that just below the surface is the unstated assumption that businessmen must be treated warily because they’re out to harm you.

McMahon, on the other hand, is forward looking: she focuses on the important role played by the entrepreneur in the job creation process, and doesn’t mention the government at all in her answer. The only change I would have made to what she said would be to note that the government tends to be a negative force in the job creation process, and that elected officials have the responsibility to ensure that the government intervenes as little as possible in the private economy in order to ensure that entrepreneurs are as free as possible to do their work without encumbrance.

An aside: how is it possible that the Democrats have picked a candidate who looks and sounds terrible next to the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment?

“I said, ‘Listen, I’m going to get into a black Suburban and I’m going to drive back to the governor’s residence, go upstairs and order a pizza. I’m going to turn on a baseball game. You all can call me when you decide to reopen the government.'”

Naturally, the effort failed, as Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is not an adult, but rather a political point-scoring machine. Granted, a badly programmed and defective machine, but a machine nonetheless:

What we learn from this, once again, is that a) Democrats have no ability to look beyond the next election, and b) Paul Ryan is still Superman.

…and should be kept away from Congress like the rest of them all the same. Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello had this to say back in March:

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned up here (in Washington) and I didn’t really need to come up here to learn it, is the only way to get Congress to balance the budget is to give them no choice, and the only way to keep them out of the cookie jar is to give them no choice, which is why – whether it’s balanced budget acts or pay as you go legislation or any of that – is the only thing. If you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing”

Here’s the video:

For once, I believe we have a case of a Congressman telling us the truth. I look forward to seeing this chump’s hand’s tied in November. Hopefully he’ll be sent safely away from the Capitol where he can’t do any more legislative damage.

Dig deeper and you find the liberal narrative in full. The long winter out of power for the left, as the theory goes, starts with the Clintons failure to get healthcare. The first mistake was trying to ram it through Congress. The second mistake was not accepting a smaller version. The third mistake was failing to recognize the political damage. That lead to the ’94 election and their hero, Bill Clinton, throwing them over the rail in favor of Dick Morris. In an Oliver Stone way, all of this gave us Bush, Iraq, the WoT and whatever bogeymen they want to load on the cart.

So, Obama handed healthcare off to Pelosi and Reid. They accepted less than the originally wanted and made whatever deals necessary to get it done. They were even ready with a highly choreographed ceremony to bask in the warm glow of public approval.

Ooops.

To say healthcare is a political problem now, means the liberal historiography of the last 16 years is wrong. That’s so embedded in the catechism of the left, there’s no way they can do it. Instead I would expect the moonbats to start saying the problem with healthcare is it did not go far enough fast enough.

“I hope by next year we’ll have abolished Fannie and Freddie,” he said. Remarkable. And he went on to say that “it was a great mistake to push lower-income people into housing they couldn’t afford and couldn’t really handle once they had it.” He then added, “I had been too sanguine about Fannie and Freddie.”

If only we could get more leftists to realize that the policies they push in order to “help” the poor and underprivileged more often than not end up hurting everyone – especially the poor and underprivileged that the left claims to care about so much. In the meantime, let’s enjoy this moment of sunshine from one of the worst members of Congress who will no doubt try to walk this back at some point when it’s politically convenient.

Her definition of success is apparently very similar to everyone else’s definition of failure.

“This is the laboratory of the states right here,” she told NBC’s David Gregory. “And I can tell you what has worked. What has worked is the government smartly intervening to save the auto industry; smartly, strategically, surgically intervening to invest with the private sector to create, for example, the electric batteries for the vehicles; smartly intervening with the private sector to be able to do the breakthrough technologies that the private sector doesn’t have the funds to be able to do. That’s what other countries are doing. And we’ve got to realize that these economic models that just say, ‘We’ve got to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut,’ you know, who’s applauding most is China.”

I’m not sure how Granholm can claim credit for a federal initiative to save GM and Chrysler, and the reality is that Ford is doing reasonably well these days without having been bailed out by the government. And then there’s that battery plant in Holland to do the “breakthrough technologies that the private sector doesn’t have the funds to be able to do.” First of all, the government has no funds outside of what it leeches off the private sector. Secondly, if there was an actual demand for this “breakthrough technology,” you can bet that plenty of money will make its way to that product without the government’s help.

Granholm is as dumb as a stump, an empty skirt if there ever was one, and she’s lucky that she ran for governor in a state dominated by union politics against lackluster opposition, because that’s how she got elected. The day she leaves office is the day that Michigan has a chance to grow again, barring the election of Virg Bernero as Governor, who seems to think that he can somehow by executive fiat recreate the good old days when Michigan was the only game in town for auto manufacturing and high school graduates could walk down to the employment office at GM and get a high-paying assembly line job with a big fat pension when they retire at age 55. Ain’t gonna happen.

I’ve been following the whole Andrew Breitbart vs. the NAACP/Obama Administration dustup involving the videotape of Shirley Sharrod of the USDA admitting to racial discrimination in carrying out her past duties before an audience at an NAACP event, and it’s just unpleasant. Brietbart has a point, of course – Sharrod’s admissions of racism do garner murmurs of approval from the crowd, which is awful. Critics of Brietbart have a point as well when they note that the statements made by Sharrod in the video clip released by Brietbart were tempered somewhat by her later comments in the address. But Brietbart supporters also have a point when they respond by saying that the whole point of releasing the video clip in the first place was not to go after Sharrod, but to point out the approving reaction of the NAACP crowd to the awful things Sharrod was saying. And almost everyone agrees that the White House acted too quickly in dismissing her from her job.

Opinion on Sharrod have whipsawed from her being a contemptible villain to her being a blameless victim over the course of just a few days. With reflection, it seems that neither position is totally correct; she certainly has been victimized to some extent, but she’s certainly not the angel she’s being portrayed as at this moment. I’m inclined to agree with Andy McCarthy at NRO, who comments on the contents of the full video of Sharrod’s speech, which still makes her look bad:

So, in Sherrod World, mean-spririted, racist Republicans do nasty things that “we” would never do because we have a president who, being black, is above that stuff. Still, we have-nots need to band together for “change” because a cabal of haves, desperate to keep their power, is still imposing their centuries old capitalist system of institutionalized racism — the same racism that courses through the Republican Party and surfaces on “us versus them” issues like healthcare.

Pardon me, but I think I’ll stay off the Canonize Shirley bandwagon. To me, it seems like she’s still got plenty of racial baggage. What we’re seeing is not transcendence but transference. That’s why the NAACP crowd reacted so enthusiastically throughout her speech.

With an ever-expanding federal bureaucracy assuming overlord status in what used to be private industry and private matters, are we supposed to feel better that this particular bureaucrat’s disdain, though once directed at all white people, is now channeled only toward successful white people … most of whom — like successful black people — worked very hard to become successful? Are we supposed to forget that when the Left says, “It’s always about the money,” you don’t have to have a whole lot of money to find yourself on the wrong side of their have/have-not equation? Are we supposed to take comfort in having our affairs managed by bureaucrats who see the country as a Manichean divide beset by institutionalized racism?

At the very least, Sharrod seems to have some toxic ideas about the American political and economic system guiding her actions. Is it possible for people with toxic ideas to be treated badly? Yes. Does that mean that those people should be absolved of responsibility for or shielded from criticism of their ideas? Absolutely not.